La6000D 63k

La6000D 63k
By Abide


I signed up for the LA6000D a while back thinking it would be a good high altitude prep race for Leadville. The race description claimed it was a 63k with 4000m (13,000′) elevation gain and the highest point is at 3000m (10,000′). Pretty much the same elevation as the start of Leadville with slightly less elevation gain. Basically a single climb from the valley floor in the pic below to the snowy part of peak on the left.

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I flew into France Thursday night so I could relax a little on Friday before the race. Instead of relaxing I decided to rent a mountain bike and ended up riding a 50k with a good 2000m worth of climbing. Whoops. Hopefully it will also be a good training mistake as the MTB race is a week before the trail run. Anyway onto the race.

The start was at 6am on Saturday morning. I got a decent nights sleep and woke up at 4am, got dressed, drank some coffee and drove to the start line. Expecting a smaller race of around 400, I was quite surprised to see about 1,500 people at the start line. It almost felt like a bigger road marathon.

The first 3-4k were reasonably flat, but shortly after the big climb started. I was in DFL as I was being excessively cautious with me knee. The trail varied from a easy climb to a steep challenging climb to an even steeper WTF climb. The race was set up as a marketing tool for the local ski resorts and we went from resort to resort on the way up. A portion of the climb was done on the local bobsled track, odd but fun and they had music playing on the track.

Things were going pretty well for the first 19k it was a lot of hiking in a conga line. I probably was not consuming enough calories as this section took around 3 and a half hours and I just went through my electrolyte drink. I did manage to pass some people on the way up by holding a pretty steady pace.

The first aid stop was pretty hectic, there wasn’t a lot of room or decent food to eat. I filled up on fluids and grabbed a chunk of banana. I need to remember that the races over here usually have terrible food options as I brought some candy with me, but I was wishing I had brought some solid food.

The next 11k was to the base of the glacier, there was a very nice gradual descent into the next aid stop at ~29k. Then we started up the glacier which was a very gnarly steep climb plus higher elevations. I was taking regular stops to catch my breathe and recoup some energy. This portion took me a little over an hour to go less than ~2k. It was tough.

Eventually, we made it up and there was another fluid stop and a bit more climb before the long descent down.

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Up on the top!

The descent on the upper portion of the race was very steep. I was taking it very slow, basically walking. There were a couple of flare ups on my right IT band but nothing that lingered for too long.

Eventually, things leveled out a little and then we had one more significant climb at around the 40k point. Once again it was slow going up and frequent breaks. Once up top a sign said 21k to go and it was all downhill from this point. We were still making our way down the ski slopes so the trails were still steep and I was still taking it easy coming down. That was my mantra for this race to walk away without any injury. Pretty much everybody I had passed at this point flew on by me now. Switchbacks don’t exist up here unfortunately, I am assuming it was because they were ski slopes and they didn’t want to mess them up.

Things started going really well after the aid stop here at 45k, I drank some Pepsi and then there was some amazing single track with gradual switchbacks! I couldn’t hold myself back and had to run. In fact, I had this big stupid ear to ear grin on my face it was such great down hill single track. There were a couple of more fluid stops and I grabbed some Pepsi whenever I could, as the caffeine was definitely helping. And then kept on running down. The race cut offs were setup 7 hours up and 5.5 hours down, or something like that. I think I was a little ahead of those cut offs the whole way.

Eventually, the trail bottomed out at the valley and it was another few kilometers into town. I ran most of the way in and finished in 12:16.

And that’s that, no knee pain or after race swelling like the last one. The IT band seems to be recovering. I think some of the recovery work I have been doing has been helpful but now I am wondering if my wife’s idea of really “injuring” the IT band is what help forces your body to heal it. Whereas when you just get to the point where it’s an inflamed overuse injury there is no acute healing process that takes place? I’m gonna test it out again this weekend with some back to back runs, in addition to some shoe experiments and bring some solid food.

Here is a cool YouTube which shows the course.

 
Great report Abide! Glad to hear the knee and ITB issues are resolving. A good omen for Leadville. Definitely envious looking at that gorgeous scenery. You'd think the French would be more on top of the food though.

Well they did have wine and cheese so I shouldn't complain too much. It's probably more me being too hard to please than a lack on their part.

Thanks yeah a good omen is right, hopefully the timing all works out!
 
Great job and wow nice views! Sucks about the food though!

I couldn't help but notice since my recent hiking trip was fresh in my mind...
Your race: 63k (39.1 miles) with 13,000' elevation gain
My trip: 39.8 miles with 13,500' gain (gps usually overestimates slightly imo)

Wow. Nearly identical numbers! It took me 3 days to do that and it pretty well kicked my butt. And you did it in 12 hours!